4d6 Drop Lowest

what to expect

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 11:55:00 +0000

Who doesn't know D&D's ability generation method, rolling 4d6 and dropping the lowest die? I guess a lot of people know about it.
But how many people know what to expect when they roll their six ability scores?

With this code we extract the highest rolled ability, then the second highest, and so on, and display each with a separate graph line.

And here is the at-least graph.

This teaches us that there's only a 9.34% change to get at least one 18 out of six rolls. Getting at least two 18s has only a 0.38% chance, and so on.

Highest at least

One

Two

Three

18

9.34%

0.38%

0.01%

17

30.07%

4.03%

0.34%

16

56.76%

17.85%

3.26%

15

79.40%

42.16%

14.13%

14

92.80%

69.01%

36.29%

It also shows us that the average roll is rougly 16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9. This is pretty close to the D&D 3e elite array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8)
and the slightly boosted D&D 4e standard array (16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10).

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:42:39 +0000Thanks

Hey, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate both AnyDice and these blog posts. Thanks!

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 10:36:31 +0000Jasper

It's my pleasure. Thanks for letting me know!

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 12:04:38 +0000Awesome, THANKS!

Our GM has us roll 4d6 while dropping the lowest & reroll ones; how would I input that?

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:31:51 +0000Jasper

Depends upon the details. First, you could either reroll 1s a single time, sticking with a possible new 1, or eliminate the 1s by rerolling them until you get something better. Second, you could do this either before or after keeping the highest three out of four dice.

See this program to compare these options:http://anydice.com/program/37c